Small steps for Firefox

Firefox 0.9.1, and Thunderbird 0.7.1 have been released to fix some things, and to show off the new and improved Firefox theme! In other Firefox news, apparently all of the viruses and worms and such are making strange bed-fellows. The US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security is advising that people use Firefox (or one of the other non-Internet Explorer options). Non-Firefox users beware however, that link WILL try to open a pop-up window of some kind (I don't know which because Firefox blocked it). So now it is the patriotic and intellignet thing to do!

Horrible wind!!

Well, I was out enjoying an evening with my folks when a nasty thunderstorm rolled in with wind and lightning, and rain what whatnot. When I got home my lights were kinda 'sketchy' and flickery and some things (like my computer and DSL modem) wouldn't come on at all! I went to the back yard to check the breaker box, and realized that my old oak tree had not weathered the storm so well.

For all those bio-kids out there who like Macs, well now you can have your x-grid computing power, and not pay an arm and a leg for it (although you will have to delve into linux a litte). This cool new program allows linux and unix machines to interface with a Mac controlled x-grid cluster, making it suddenly a lot cheaper to add a few under $300 Dell systems to your cluster. Of course, the pure of heart will use Linux and a Mosix cluster, avoiding the whole Mac business alltogether. Home-brew BLAST servers anyone? Interestingly, they use the same program (POV-Ray) to test their cluster that I did when I was keen on building Mosix clusters back in the day!
Also, apparently these crazy little cars are going to start selling sometime this summer. They sort of look like a duck to me, cool mind you, but cool like a duck. I would probably still drive one (I'm sure girls would flock like mississippi-moths to a candle, after all Austin Powers drove one right?). The real question is which color? And do they come in a pack like skittles candies?

Bush, *almost* top terror promoting US president of all time!?
Today saw some spooky things emerge on the political front. First off the Bush administration re-released their annual report on terrorism around the world. According to the original version, which a lot of Bush supporters held up as support for his methods, terrorism in 2003 was at a 34 year low. The new report (which apparently is still being revised and added to) shows a decline in deaths from 2002, but an increase in attacks, for a 21 year high. Basically, the numbers for 2003 doubled in the new version of the report. Given this new data (compiled by the president's own people and not some bunch of liberal whackos) I think it is safe to say that Bush is the second most competent president at promoting terrorism in recent history (apparently topped by Reagan 21 years ago?). The totals go as such: 208 attacks, 3,646 injured, and 625 killed globally. These figures apparently don't include the actions that Bush proclaims "the terrorists" are carrying out in Iraq. Speaking of Iraq, the terrorists are WAY BEHIND US forces for numbers of dead and wounded during the Iraq war. The administration is claiming computer errors as part of the reason for their mis-count. 3,646 is NOT a very big number for a computer, even a very old computer. Either the first numbers were fudged on purpose, or the people who compiled them are not very bright. I could probably do better with Open Office and back issues of the NY Times. Need I say more?
Here at home, another of the rights our troops are apparently fighting for was revoked. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that if a police officer asks for your name, you have to give it or go to jail. Apparently the police officer doesn't have to offer any explanation for his query. This ruling was in response to a Nevada rancher who refused to give his name when asked. So what I wonder is what happens if you lie? Is it okay for the officer to demand an identification card? If I can't show my registration-papers do I go to jail too? Maybe it would be safer to just implant an RF tag in everyone with their social security number encoded on it at birth. The technology seems to work well on fish.... Or we could just get a bar-code tattooed on our necks. Good grief, how far will we go to "protect freedom"?
In other depressing news.. apparently my grandfather is more or less a nihilist. And as they say in The Big Lebowski, "say what you want about the tennants of national socialism, at least its an ethos."

Now as everyone who knows me knows, I am a fanatic when it comes to tricking out my honda civic. With everything from low-profile tires to a level 3 exhaust kit, nos, custom decals, and a stereo system that makes old women weep, I thought I had it all (and could teach those Fast & Furious boys a thing or two besides). That was until I found out about Trunk Monkey. Now I realize that my life, and my car is truely incomplete. Watch the videos on that site and you will know why.

For those of you who want to be all-kinda snazzy, there are some specially optimized versions of Firefox out. Those with newer computers that have Pentium 4 or Athlon XP processors should get this one. Those with older cpus (Pentium 3 or Pentium 2's) should get this version (these cool builds are being done by Moox). I think I would install the official release first, and then install the optimized version over top.
Also, Mono (the opensource .NET replacement) came out in Beta3 yesterday. I haven't used it a lot yet, but between it and Sharp Develop, things in the open-source C# and .net programming world are getting peachy.

Firefox 0.9 has been released!! Read a review here. Download the official release here. Torrent-enabled people can also get it that way. If you don't like the new theme, get the old one here. And make sure to get the Macromedia stuff! Three Cheers for open-source software!!! (now I must close my web-browser to install the new version).

Ripples from 9/11 or is Nazism on the rise?

Normally I have a mild aversion to Country music, mostly because it seems to forward an anti-education, fairytale view of the world which encourages and celebrates ignorance and the wish to be ignorant. Beyond this it seems that a good deal of the Country songs I've heard, play on emotions such as greed, fear, and pride with a "do it and let the consequences be damned" sort of attitude. This approach seems to be especially appealing to those of a more conservative bent for some reason. I think it is because these songs support the theory that people in the US deserve to consume more resources, than people in the not-so-promised lands. Most popular Country music is merely a reincarnation of Manifest Destiny distilled into "music". My dealings with Country music are fairly limited however, so I am sure that there is a fair amount which does not fall into this category. Some sort-of-country music I even like; The Cowboy Junkies for instance are a bit country-ish, but a bit less gung-ho about running off from home at 17 to get married to the hot-headed abusive guy with an old ford pickup truck, tight jeans, cowboy hat, and no future.

The other day I was surprised, and sad to hear something quite a bit worse however. A little research lead to the title, Holy War by Brooks and Dunn. Let me quote the lyrics:

Some say a holy war is comin'
Gonna be the end of mortal man
There's a TV preacher sayin'
Armageddon is at hand
Sayin' the Jews, the Gays, the Junkies
The Politicians and Infidels
Have conjured up the devil
Upon the gates of hell


I turn on the TV
Lord I can't believe my eyes
Oh Terror walks the streets
While a million mothers cry
Christians pray to Jesus
Lord help us if you can
Send Gabriel and his legions
To defend his promised land


All it's prophets lead
While the blind sheep they follow
The path to damnation with no future no tomorrow
Justice she may be blind
Tall and proud she marches on
Judgment day is coming
God himself wrote that in stone


They say a holy war is comin'
Gonna be the end of mortal man
There's a TV preacher sayin'
Armageddon is at hand
They said fire rained down from Heaven
On the towers of Babylon
Oh the innocent the sinners
They all died as one


Now victory will be mine
All feeble and good say
But in the end and in its own way
Righteousness will have it's way


Being from Idaho, I've seen a few skin-heads and the like from time to time (they thought they were really snazzy spray painting swastikas on the high school, or shouting racial slurs in college), so when I first heard this I thought 'good grief, being a hate mongering idiot has been popularized on a national scale'. I think this might have been hasty however. While the rest of album seems to be true-blue red-blooded defend freedom etc, this song seems laced with a heavy dose of cynicism. I can't help but think that the lines about prophets leading and blind sheep following are awfully Nietzsche like, and apply as easily to any right-wing Christian group as they do to Osama and friends. It seems to me that a Holy War is pretty much here, and our commander and chief prophet is leading a lot of blind sheep on a path to damnation. Apparently 833+ Americans (people from the USA, not the rest of the Americas) have been killed, and 4704+ wounded. This means that we have gotten about 1/3 as many people killed getting revenge for 9-11 as died in 9-11 (and a lot more wounded). Besides this, apparently somewhere between 9,000 and 11,000 Iraq civilians have died. I ask those who are mathematically inclided to tell me... Who is the terrorist here? Or are we still working under the assumption that 1 "American" = 8 brown-skinned foreigners. I had hopped that we got rid of that, but maybe it has lived on in conservative right wing Christian politics, and it's mouthpiece to the masses, Country music.

I was unfortunate enough to attempt to watch Van Helsing tonight. This is without doubt the worst movie I have seen in years. I am told that Dude where's my Car is worse, but if so it has got to tread in a realm of horridness which I can't imagine. Van Helsing is what happens when a large pile of cow manure is mixed with an equally large pile of money, and then spattered on a wall with some kind of wood-chipper. I would have thought it was a spoof and laughed my guts out except that the actors took themselves so seriously. Even their one-liners are delivered like a sack of severed heads--lifeless. The story is nearly non-existent, the cuts between scenes make home videos seem professional, and the dialogue would have been more believable if written by chimps. Round this combination out with actors who's fake accents are so fake you can't tell whether they are supposed to be from Brooklyn or Transylvania (probably they don't know either), repetitive fight scenes which go on and on, and a number of obvious theiveries from other successful movies, and you have Van Helsing. I mean, for God's sake, any movie that rips off Tuco's "if you are going to shoot shoot, don't talk" is pretty questionable to begin with, but when it combines that with a "007 gets outfitted by quirky inventor" rip things get ghastly. I have never seen so many things explode into green goop, so many people/creatures hurled, dropped, squashed, or battered with little obvious effect, or so many "harpy carries thing while making funny faces" scenes in one setting. Nor do I hope to ever again. I watched most of the second half of this movie in fast forward (thank God for DVD technology) at this speed, and without sound it is almost bearable.

After an uncomfortably long wait, Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11 has a trailer up and is scheduled to come out June 25th. Apparently it will be distributed widely. I just hope that means Idaho because I plan on going, and I'd rather not have to drive out of state to do it.

Also I put some new photos up on my photos page. There will probably be even more soon.

More anti-Internet Explorer news out today. According to ZDNet apparently the I-Lookup search bar people (shall I say shoddy-rotten scheming bastards?) have been exploiting a couple of bugs in Internet Explorer to install spy-ware and add-ware programs on computers when people either open an email or view a web-page in Internet Explorer/Outlook/Outlook Express. The malicious program then pops up porn adds etc every few minutes. I thought I'd been hearing an awful lot about spyware being installed lately, but good grief! Could Microsoft open the gates any wider? To make matters worse, apparently 80% of spam comes from infected Microsoft Windows PC's! Once again, I beg all literate self respecting computer users to PLEASE use Mozilla Firefox for web browsing and Mozilla Thunderbird for email. If not for their own sakes, then for the good of humanity. It is probably also a good idea to keep a copy of Adaware handy, or at least sanitize your computer with it if you have ever used Internet Explorer

In other news....

The bards are still dreaming up songs about Reagan despite the fact that he doesn't really deserve much credit for ending the Cold War, increased the deficite to never before seen highs, sold arms to know terrorists, etc.... Here is a book about him by a *local* author.

Cowboys may someday be replaced by wi-fi, so could I be a wi-fi-cowboy? Would I have to wear the boots?

Meanwhile... the Bush administration apparently favors torture, and are trying to use legal manuvers to get around The Geneva accords against torture (formed because of Hitler I believe). NPR has a 52 page leaked memo on the subject as well as an interview. What ever happened to "what goes around comes around"? Maybe they are trying to incentify our soldiers to fight to the death since they know they have no right to except humane treatment if captured. Despite party affiliations, Senator Craig (from here in Idaho) is quoted as saying something intelligent.. "I hope that in the end, Saddam Hussein will not have taken away from us something that our Constitution, in large part, granted us, and that we have it taken away in the name of safety and security." Maybe I will have to re-think my opinion of him. Saddam has become a more potent "terrorist" in defeat than he ever was while in power, even when he was our friend. Of course he was never actually involved in the 9/11 thing at all, so mostly this is the Bush administration jockying for power.

Wooho!, Firefox (my favorite browser in the whole wide world) is up to 0.9rc1 (release candidate 1 for the un-initiated). Firefox was already awsome, and it keeps getting better. It makes IE look like a model-T in comparison. It blocks pop up adds and doesn't install horrible viruses or allow web pages to run malicious code. As if these reasons weren't enough, it also supports a cool feature called tabed browsing which allows you to open multiple web pages in the same window with a simple middle click.
Release notes can be found here

You might need the Macromedia Flash Player as well as Macromedia Shockwave player. Install these after installing Firefox.

I am afraid that this blog will mostly be a rant... maybe I will try to alternate.

So my old father (aka Geeze) sent me a review of a pretty interesting and disturbing book:

HOME FRONT
The Government's War on Soldiers
by
Rick Anderson
Foreword by FRANCIS A. BOYLE
ISBN: 0-932863-41-8

Among other disturbing statistics, it points out that although only 148 soldiers were killed in the 1991 Gulf War 11,000 have died since. These casualty rates are due to a mix of problems which don't include old-age. Apparently military personnel are frequently not provided with adequate medical treatment during and especially after wars. They are sometimes even used as guinea pigs for testing new medicines which sometimes cause horrible problems. Who knows what the long term consequences of our current *operations* will be. Maybe 20,000 or 30,000?
Now, I am generally not pro-war by any means, but I am even less in favor of treating people as disposable resources. I've noticed that it is in vogue to refer to a soldier as a "troop" lately. Maybe this is due to the women in the military thing, but it comes across as if they are a small version of a humvee or something. It seems to me that even if we put someone in camouflage, have them do a lot of push ups, and give them a gun, they are still human. Or am I missing something here? Various futurists have claimed that someday wars will be fought with robots. This won't be the case. The reality is that our leaders already view each "troop" as a cheap disposable robot. Why go to the expense of fixing them when more will roll off the assembly line at any moment?
Anyway, follow these links for reviews of this book:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=1904
http://www.bookmasters.com/clarity/b0025.htm
Maybe buy it? I don't know, perhaps something more potent than yellow ribbons is in order. Maybe we shouldn't commit ourselves to a war if we are not willing to support those who we send to fight it?
At this point, we probably all know someone who is in, is going, or might go to Iraq. Are these people disposable to you?

Okay, so maybe I have to post a new "entry" in order to get this whole comments ability to show up?